a, MUSTELID Al 
CARNIVORA. MUSTELIDE. 
Fossil, nat. size. Cave. 
PUTORIUS VULGARIS.  Pole-cat. 
Espece dela grandeur du Putois, Cuvisr, Oss. Foss. iy. p. 467. 
Mustela antiqua, H. von Meyer, Palologica, 1832, p. 54. 
Mustela Putorius Fossilis, SCHMERLING, Ossem. Foss. de Liége 1833, 
tom. ii. pl. i. figs. 1 and 2. 
Fosstz remains of Mammalia much smaller than the 
Badger have been discovered in bone-caves and_ raised 
beaches in England, and give equal proof of their contem- 
poraneity with the extinct species of the Cave epoch: de- 
monstrating that the Pole-cat and Stoat, for example, have 
survived, as species, those changes, or catastrophes, during 
which their gigantic contemporaries perished ; and that they 
have either been continued down to the present time by 
uninterrupted descent from generation to generation, without 
any appreciable alteration of their specific character ; or, 
that, having perished with the Ursus speleus, they have 
again been introduced at a subsequent epoch under the 
same specific form. 
